Dom Robinson reviews

for Dreamcast

Distributed by
Mad Catz

• Price: œ17.99

The first thing you notice is its slightly bulky feel compared to a standard Sega joypad. Whereas the sides of that one are almost vertical in the main part, the Mad Catz Dreampad has more of a crescent moon shape, the extra size being used to its advantage to contain rubber patches for extra grip, not that I've ever felt the Sega version falling out of my hands due to the lack of these.

The controller also comes in five colours: a standard cream-coloured pad, looking not drastically different from a Sega original, plus see-through blue, green, purple and red. It also includes the standard slots for a VMU and vibration pack.

The main advantage with this pad is that you can reprogram the buttons to perform the functions of others. It's quite simply done - press the 'program' button, positioned about halfway between the 'start' and 'A' buttons, which then turns orange, then if you want to, for example, re-map the function of 'B' to be used from the 'A' button, press 'A', after which the program button will flash, then 'B', which will then turn off the light on the program button. However, the Dreampad is not fully reprogrammable since neither the rear shoulder buttons, nor the analogue joystick's functions can be altered.

There are two extra buttons for which you can program as desired, which are labelled Z and C, to extend the choice from the standard four. Unfortunately, the positioning of these is wrong, since compared to a standard controller's four (X, Y, A, B), these are placed at approximately where the Dreampad has its upper four (Y, Z, B, C), which means some remapping is required to stop accidental presses of the wrong button.